The Bad and the Beautiful

Graham Daseler | The American Conservative | 27th July 2018

An interesting but inconclusive discussion about badly behaved male artists like Caravaggio, Degas and Balthus. Art should be judged on its own merits rather than through the lens of the artist’s behavior. Degas, for example, disliked Jews and women intensely, yet “depicted women with more tenderness, more humanity, and more vivacity than just about any other painter of his era.”